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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
One calendar rather than four. Paper or phone matters far less than whether you will open it, so choose the one that appears in front of you without a decision. Put the fixed things in first, then what has to happen around them, then leave some empty space on purpose. Looking at it at the same moment every day, with the coffee or on the bus, is the step people skip, and it is the step that makes the rest of it work.
By the pen and by all they write (Quran 68:1). Writing is sworn by and honoured, which is a kinder way to see a calendar than as an admission that you cannot cope.
القلم
نٓۚ وَٱلۡقَلَمِ وَمَا يَسۡطُرُونَ
Nun By the pen! By all they write
Qur’an 68:1read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a cross-sectional study of 114 undergraduates, the link between attention problems and putting things off ran through executive skills such as time management and organisation. Everything was measured at a single point, so it cannot show that improving those skills fixes the problem. It does put organisation and time management right in the middle of the path, which is where a calendar does its work.
Bolden J, Fillauer JP. (2020). "Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week": Executive functions mediate the relation between procrastination and attention problems.. Journal of American college health : J of ACH doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Holding several future commitments against each other is heavy work for memory, and paper does it for free.
A healthy list loses items as well as gaining them. Some leave because they are done and some because they did not survive the week. Both are normal.
For the item that never gets done, make an actual decision: cross it off, or find a way to genuinely want it. Leaving it sitting there is the only option that costs you every single day.
Pick the place that will actually hold the person, not the one with the better name on the letterhead. Three years somewhere that fits beats one term somewhere that does not.